ZEC dismisses Prof Moyo’s allegations

Farirai Machivenyika Senior ReporterThe Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) is carrying out a second round of the de-duplication exercise of the voters’ roll to deal with people who registered during inspection of the BVR and expects to finish the process soon.

ZEC said this in a statement while responding to questions following allegations made by Professor Jonathan Moyo on his Twitter handle, accusing the electoral body of manipulating the voters’ roll to ensure zanu-pf’s victory in the elections.

The elections management body carried another round of voter registration alongside the inspection of the BVR early this month. The provisional voters’ roll had been established following the BVR exercise that was carried out since August last year. Prof Moyo made a number of allegations that included use of Chinese military experts to manipulate the voters’ roll and creation of new polling stations to accommodate ghost voters.

In the statement yesterday, ZEC denied that it had already availed a physical copy of the voters’ roll to zanu-pf.

“That is false and mischievous (that ZEC has availed the voters’ roll to zanu-pf). The voters’ roll will be furnished to all political parties and candidates once the commission avails it in line with the provisions of the (Electoral) Act. At the moment, we are doing a second round of de-duplication using AFIS after we had registrants during the inspection of the BVR, we expect to be finished very soon.”

The elections management body denied that there were Chinese experts that had been seconded to work with them.

“That is false, we do not have any Chinese nationals working with ZEC in any capacity,” said ZEC.

“The allegations are purely malicious.”

ZEC denied allegations that they were going to create new polling stations and described the accusations also as malicious. These are purely malicious allegations and meant to cause alarm and despondency and are not even worthy to respond to,” said ZEC.

ZEC said they were not setting up new polling stations, but were creating sub-polling stations within the traditional ones. The sub-polling stations are meant to deal with areas where the voters’ threshold in a particular polling area exceeds the set limit.